Pixel Droppings

How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives From the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended

On Juneteenth, Here Are 5 Ways to Be a Better Ally

Race and Wrongful Conviction

How a Wrongly Incarcerated Person Became the ‘Most Brilliant Legal Mind’ in ‘America’s Bloodiest Prison’

A Mistaken Identification Sent Him to Prison for 38 Years, But He Never Gave Up Fighting for Freedom

‘The Dungeon Was the Last Place I Wanted to Go’: An Exoneree’s Story of Survival at Angola Prison

Snapco - Builds power of Black trans and queer people to force systemic divestment from the prison industrial complex and invest in community support.

Black AIDS Institute - Working to end the Black HIV epidemic through policy, advocacy, and high-quality direct HIV services.

Trans Cultural District - The world’s first-ever legally recognized trans district, which aims to stabilize and economically empower the trans community.

LGBTQ+ Freedom Fund - Posts bail for LGBTQ+ people held in jail or immigrant detention and raises awareness of the epidemic of LGBTQ overincarceration.

House of GG - Creating safe and transformative spaces for community to heal, and nurturing them into tomorrow’s leaders, focusing on trans women of color in the South.

Trans Justice Funding Project - Community-led funding initiative to support grassroots trans justice groups run by and for trans people.

The Okra Project - Collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black trans people by bringing home-cooked meals and resources to the community.

—Did you know that Juneteenth is also celebrated in a part of Mexico? Nacimiento Mexico was once home to thousands who escaped slavery in the US. As many as 10,000 slaves followed a clandestine Southern Underground Railroad to Mexico. —To date, many Black Mexicans from the Texas area retrace a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery. —Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southern border observe Texas’s emancipation holiday with their own unique traditions in the village of Nacimiento. —Slave hunters would patrol the southern border for escapees, led by the Texas Rangers but the Mexican army would be there waiting for them (the slave hunters) to turn them away.

This sketch is incredible. Perfect moment to capture. 10/10 for the artist.

Link to post

Audre Lorde!

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Audre Lorde was a black American woman, and to directly quote Wikipedia, she was “an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet, and civil rights activist.” (Wikipedia.org, Audre Lorde)

Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde on February 18th, 1934, Lorde was an exceptionally expert poet, with examples of her most famous works being ‘Coal’ (a poem of her celebrating her blackness), and ‘Who Said It Was Simple’ (a poem of her talking about her radical and open identity)! 

Because Audre Lorde was a lesbian and black, she faced both racism and homophobia, as well as classism. Her works also reflect this, as she often wrote about the discrimination she faced and talked about it in many different interviews. 

Lorde identified herself publicly in the 1950s, as both a lesbian and a poet. During this time she also attended Hunter College, and graduated in 1959. She continued her education at the Columbia University School of Library Service, and earned a master’s degree in library science!

Later, she went to Tougaloo College in Mississippi, where she was a writer in residency and led workshops with her fellow black students. 

In the 1970s, Lorde joined the WIFP (Women’s Institute of Freedom of the Press), and actively fought for women’s rights and women’s based media like this!

Lorde eventually taught at Lehman College for a year, then at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice as an English professor. There, she fought for a creation of a black studies department, despite being out of place due to the dominantly white male field.

And despite all that, she still managed to co-found the first U.S. publisher for women of color, called the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press!

Eventually, Lorde also spoke and called out the violent racism against Afro-Germans in East Berlin (shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall). Lorde had an extremely large impact on the Afro-German movement, and became the focus of a documentary because of it (Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 - 1992).

In conclusion, Audre Lorde was an incredibly strong woman, and very brave for showing her true identity in a time where it could get you potentially hurt, jailed, raped, killed, etc. Lorde has also had multiple organizations and movements named after her because of her many achievements, such as The Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, the Audre Lorde Project, and the Audre Lorde Award!

(Sources: Wikipedia, Bio)

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Thank you so much to @snowbridge-356 for the request! It was really nice learning about her and all that!

And if YOU have a queer person with an impact on history, MESSAGE ME OR SEND ME AN ASK! It’s MUCH easier than sifting through my activity thingy!

it would be so awesome

funnily enough kym has like the most complete and comprehensible coverage of the ceo's little stunt that i've found so far. link to their article

i’ve been on a ton of different platforms now and even though i interact with a lot of trans people, i’ve noticed that i often find myself othered by trans fem communities. the exclusion is subtle because i am east asian, pretty, and passing. and because i am pretty and passing, i often receive recognition and admiration from other trans fems. and because i am east asian as opposed to someone with black or brown skin, i am often accepted into white circles.

but i am not white. and the subtle exclusion comes from my distaste of jokes that fail to account for privilege, from speaking up when white creators speak over other people of color, from simply having a different perspective

because i am not white. and i have never been.

i’ve lived my entire life being nearly accepted by the white people around me. and the subtle exclusion that has been a staple of my life hasn’t gone away because racism still exists within queer communities.

it’s not enough to be loud about fighting oppression.

i am queer. i am a dyke, a faggot, and a tranny.

if it makes you uncomfortable to see people use these slurs to identify themselves, think about why. we are clearly comfortable using these words to describe ourselves. so how is your discomfort with us any different than the world’s discomfort with you? how is your behavior any different from the homophobia and transphobia directed towards you?

remember that the first pride was a riot led by trannies. don’t undo the work that our elders did to reclaim these words. say queer with your whole chest and with pride.